Generally, most drivers would be very much appreciated if he or she can have the ability to aware of each and every obstacle in his/her moving track of vehicle for improving driving safety, which is especially true when the driver is maneuvering a vehicle in his/her visual blind spots for parking or passing through a narrow road section. Nowadays, thanks to the rapid development in electronic technology, many automobile manufacturers had answered such desire by starting to install electric sensors in their products. There are two types of sensors that are most commonly used, one of which is referred as the distance sensor such as ultrasonic sensors, infrared sensors, millimeter wave sensors and radar sensor; and the other is referred as the image sensor such as CCD and CMOS. The distance sensor is usually being applied as a unidirectional obstacle detector for issuing an alarm for alerting the condition that there is an obstacle blocking the moving track of the vehicle on which it is installed, and is mostly seen in adaptive cruise control system, car reversing radar aid system, and so on. Moreover, the image sensor is used as a wide-range visual assistant in lane/vehicle identification system, rear view camera system, or blind spot detection system, and so on. It is noted that if there is a vehicle maneuvering system capable of providing a driver with sufficient information relating to the dynamic moving trajectory of the vehicle and the distances measured between the vehicle and the obstacles in its moving track, the driver can drive safely under the guidance of the vehicle maneuvering system with the minimum chance of collision.
There are already many driving assistant methods available. One of which is a land departure warning method and system disclosed in U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 20080143509, which capable of functioning to choose the data acquiring source according to brightness of the environment surrounding a vehicle and weather status so as to reduce the erroneous judgment of lane departure during image processing and analyzing. Moreover, in TW Pat. Appl. No. 095146946, a parking assistant apparatus comprising a activation unit, a first sensing unit, an guiding unit and a control unit is disclosed, by which as soon as a designated rear wheel is outside the defining of a parking lot and is detected by the first sensing unit detects, the activation unit is activated for enabling the control unit to direct the guiding unit to issue a signal fir informing the driver to reverse the steer wheel so as to park the vehicle inside the parking lot smoothly.
In addition, there is a driver assistance device for warning a driver of a motor vehicle of a risk of departure from the lane or from the lane disclosed in U.S. pub. No. 20060132295, which has at least one image-transmitting sensor, an evaluation device, connected to the image-transmitting sensor, for detecting edge-of-lane and/or lane markings and/or edges of lanes in the area sensed by the image-transmitting sensor, and a warning device which is connected to the evaluation device, in which driver assistance device in addition at least one distance-transmitting sensor is connected to the evaluation device, with which sensor the distance from objects which are elevated with respect to the surface of the lane can be determined in the region of the edge of the lane, in particular of a structural boundary of the edge of the lane. In U.S. Pub. No. 20060206243, an object detection system for vehicle is disclosed, which includes an imaging sensor and a control. Operationally, the imaging sensor is operable to capture an image of a scene occurring exteriorly of the vehicle while the control may apply an edge detection algorithm to the image after receiving the captured image so as to detect objects present within the image. Moreover, in China Pat. Appl. No. 200610097676.4, a robust lane line identification method for warning a driver of a motor vehicle of a risk of departure from the lane is disclosed, which perform a conditional edge detection respective upon two windows located at the left and the right of a vehicle for constructing corresponding gradient histograms accordingly to be used for conforming the gradient range relating to the edge of the lane line appear respectively in the two windows, and then a Kalman filter is used and applied to the gradient ranges of the two windows for filtering through all the candidate points which appear to be located at the edge of the lane line and thus for obtaining featuring parameters of the left lane line and the right lane line of a lane rapidly and accurately.
In addition, there is a driving assistance system mounted on a vehicle is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 20080043099. The system including a camera configured to acquire a plurality of images of the environment in front of the camera. The camera includes a filter wherein the filter is installed at the focal plane of the camera and wherein designated portions of the filter transmit selective light wavelength. The preferred filter has a checkerboard pattern. The system further including an image processor capable of analyzing in real time a plurality of respective image sequences acquired from at least one of the portions of the filter and is capable of detecting yellow lane markings on a concrete road surface.